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    • Waste Not, Want Not: Food and Thrift from Antiquity to the Present – September 2019
    • Food and Faith in the Early Modern World c. 1400 – c. 1700. 
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    • Food and Embodied Identities in the Early Modern and Modern World, c. 1500 – c. 1200
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In early modern England and North America meat could be roasted on a spit turned by a small dog who ran in a wheel hoisted above the mantelpiece. These dogs were called 'turnspits', and are now extinct. 🐕 This is an engraving of the practice from Henry Wigstead's Remarks on a Tour to North and South Wales: in the Year 1797 (published 1799) 🐶
Wonderful to have contributed to this fabulous book and exhibition, 'Feast & Fast: The Art of Food in Europe, 1500 – 1800'! 🍍 Opens tomorrow at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge! It's stuffed full of the material culture of eating, and the religious, political, and cultural significance of food in the early modern period 🍉🍞🎂🍴 Congrats to Melissa Calaresu and Vicky Avery 👏👏👏
A detail from Caravaggio's The Seven Works of Mercy (1607), which shows a woman feeding an imprisoned man from her breast. This is a reference to the exemplary ancient story of Roman Charity, in which Pero secretly fed- and saved - her father Cimon after he was sentenced to death by starvation ☠️ It was a common scene in 17th and 18th century European artwork, and early modern recipe books show that breast milk was recommended to adults as a cure for a number of ailments 🥛 Image public domain.
It's feeling wintery today! 🍵 Anne Costner Vallayer, White Soup Bowl 1771 🍞 Image public domain
A still life showing a fruit bowl, with apples and grapes, wine, and preserved fruits from the House of Julia Felix, Pompei (before 79AD)🍈🍇 The Romans often decorated their homes with images of food, depictions which had both decorative and symbolic significance as perhaps signs of hospitality for the guest or as sustenance for the dead 🍽️ The pomegranate may have referred to Proserpina, who in the myth cyclically returned to the earth, and so acted as a symbol of rebirth 🍼 Image: Naples, Museo Archeologico, wikimedia commons.
The Loggia del Pesce /Fish's Lodge in #Florence 🐟 Commissioned by Duke Cosimo I de' Medici to Giorgio Vasari to house the fish market in Florence. It is decorated with 8 medallions that depict different fish and fishing activities. A scroll is inscribed with the words that translate as: 'The fish market which until now was held in the periods of Lent near Ponte Vecchio, now the most illustrious and eminent Cosimo de' Medici, second Grand Duke of Florence and Siena, and his son Francesco, a great Prince, have built another at far greater expense and with more magnificence to the previous one, so that, from now on, fish can be sold here. 1568'. 📜 It was destroyed during the urban renovation of Florence in the 19th century, which its decoration going to San Marco museum. In 1956 the loggia was reconstructed using much of the original materials. 🐟 More #foodfacts on my hidden history maps via link in bio ⬆️
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